As soon as she saw him she stood up and finished her champagne. ‘I must go,’ she said, ‘I have an appointment at nine.’ She refused to stay for the buffet supper prepared by Nadia. He saw her to the door, bewildered and a little angry: ‘Anne-Marie, what’s the matter? What’s happened?’
She looked unhappily past him to where Le Hir stood joking with a couple of handsome young officers attached to the ‘Gamma’ murder squad.
‘That night at the hotel,’ she said, not looking at him, ‘it was exceptional — it was after the bombing. I was alone — I wanted someone. Anybody. I was a little mad that night.’ She turned her dark eyes to him: ‘I’m sorry, but things change. There are many things here — things happening now — that I cannot tell you about. Goodbye.’ She did not kiss him, but turned quickly and he watched her go with a small twinge of longing, a sense of wounded pride. Behind him Le Hir was laughing lustily, feeling none of the tension and malaise.
Tomorrow was another day, Neil thought. His head was aching, and he went over to Nadia to have his glass refilled.
CHAPTER 6
Dawn broke yellow out to sea, with the city lying dim under a tropical rain. Neil was called by Nadia at half past five with a pot of black coffee, croissants and fresh orange juice.
He shaved carefully, like an actor before the first night. This was to be his day of triumph. In the salon Le Hir was already waiting in a belted khaki raincoat, carrying a briefcase. He was to head the escort of six armed men responsible for General Guérin’s safety. He nodded to Neil: ‘Would you like a glass of aquavit before we leave?’
Neil accepted, and they drank a stiff toast to each other, swallowing the thimbles of firewater in a gulp.
At five to six the two German legionnaires arrived. They also drank an aquavit; and at exactly six o’clock the four of them went down the street.
They crossed the ring of the barricades through the back of the same building that Neil and Anne-Marie had used on that first morning five days ago. The street below the barricade was almost deserted, with an oily grey shine in the morning drizzle… There was a mobile canteen parked by the kerb and two paras in camouflaged capes sat smoking inside the machinegun nests.
The black Peugeot 403 was waiting outside; the driver was the same big man in a denim shirt they had had on the first morning. In spite of the rain, he still wore his sunglasses.
It was 6.11 when they drove away. Timing was now of crucial importance. Neil had worked out and memorized the schedule to the nearest minute, aware that if either party reached the appointed place too early or too late the whole scheme could collapse. He now experienced the concentrated anxiety of a film director who has sweated long hours on a hazardous production and now watches the result begin to unfold, detail by detail. It gave him a satisfaction that was two-fold: the sight of men like Le Hir and the two legionnaires behaving under what were virtually his own orders helped restore his ego, badly mauled by Caroline, and also gave him a vainglorious sensation that he was positively helping the cause of humanity.
The driver took them on a route carefully prepared by Le Hir, in Neil’s presence, to avoid the concentration of Gardes Mobiles and CRS troops in the centre of the city. They drove for seventeen minutes, turning into a long drab street with wilted palms growing crookedly down the pavements, and stopped outside a bistro with a bead curtain and a couple of iron chairs standing out in the rain.
No one spoke inside the car. The time was 6.28. At precisely 6.30 two Citroën DS’s turned into the street with a sizzle of tyres and drew up at either end of the Peugeot. The timing impressed Neil. He nodded to Le Hir: ‘I hope the Arab Front are as punctual as this.’
Le Hir made no reply. The legionnaires opened the doors and they climbed out into the drizzle. There was only the driver in each of the Citroëns. Together with Le Hir and the two legionnaires they made up five of the armed escort of six. Neil and Le Hir got into the first Citroën, the legionnaires into the second. On the floor lay a couple of machine-pistols and a pair of new number plates. The doors snapped shut and the two cars drove away simultaneously, leaving the Peugeot still outside the bistro.
Neil watched the speedometer needle creep round the dial and pass the 100-kilometre mark. By the feel of the car he guessed that it must be supercharged. He noticed that the back of the driver’s neck was pitted with tiny slit-like scars.
There was little traffic. Once they passed a line of Army trucks driving into the city with motorcycle escorts; then they turned into a broad dual-carriageway that curved away into the rolling mists, with the suburbs giving way to white farms scattered across flat brown tobacco fields. There were no roadblocks.
Neil relaxed into the soft-sprung seat and said conversationally, ‘The weather seems to have changed for the worst. It’s like England.’
Le Hir stared stonily ahead, gripping the briefcase in his lap. ‘The weather’s fine,’ he murmured.
Neil said no more. Le Hir was obviously not in the mood for small talk.
The speedometer needle now wavered on the 180-kilometre mark, the air passing in a long high scream; and Neil watched nervously for some lone Moslem with donkey and cart to loom up suddenly in their path. But the road was empty, sweeping out of
